Adam Maruyama

Odysseus's Return

And now you return, thrice noble Odysseus:
How, pray tell, do your people greet you?
They greet with song and dance, with festivity and song.
They greet with legends made and newer poems sung.

Why cry you now, thrice noble Odysseus?
Your people in the street rejoice!
Frivolity and reverie replace struggle, strife;
Here you are, to Penelope returned, your beloved wife!

Whence come these sighs, o weary traveler?
They come from distant shores, m’lord,
Fraught with peril and journey’s loss:
Adventure’s greatest times.

(Honolulu, April 2003)